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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 



JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD, 



Nov. 19, 1831 — Sept. 19, 18S1. 



Wem die heiligen Todten gleichgultig sind, dem werden es 
Lebendiger auch." — Richter. 



FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 
Sept. 25th. 

By Rev. J. E. RANKIN, D. D. 




WASHINGTON, D. C. 
PILGRIM PRESS ASSOCIATION 






v. .- 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN 



Isaiah III: I, 2 and 3. — " For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of 
hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah, the mighty- 
man, the man of war, the honorable man, the counsellor, and the 
eloquent orator." 

There is no function of society more important, more 
vital, than the choice of rulers ; the selection of a na- 
tion's great men ! It is a supreme, a sacred act. When 
exercised by a great, free people, it is an anointing holier 
than that of a king's. It is the utterance of a voice 
which is the voice of God ! The Psalmist says, "Promo- 
tion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, 
nor from the south. But, God is the Judge. He putteth 
down one, and setteth up another." And there is no 
holier transaction, in which a nation ever engages, than 
that by which, through her constitutional forms, she con- 
sults God's oracles ; appeals to Him, as to the men 
whom He would have to exercise authority over her. 
Says Whittier, in his poem, "The Eve of Election," 

" Around I see the powers that be ; 

I stand by Empire's primal springs; 
I princes meet, in every street, 

And hear the tread of uncrowned kings. 

" No jest is this ! one cast amiss 

May blast the hope of Freedom's year. 
O take me where are hearts of pray'r, 
And foreheads bowed in rev'rent fear ! 



2 THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 

" So shall our voice of sov'reign choice 
Swell the deep bass of duty done ; 
And strike the key of time to be : 

When God and man shall speak as one !" 

Thus, under God's guidance, this nation furnishes her- 
self with her great men ; the men who mould her insti- 
tutions, who make her laws, who preside over her desti- 
nies ; who stamp their genius upon what is imperishable 
in her structure. What foreigner thinks of this Republic, 
without thinking of Washington, of Lincoln, of Grant? 
What citizen, without remembering the names of Jeffer- 
son and Jackson, and Webster and Sumner? And how 
largely we are as a nation what these men and men like 
them have helped to make us ! 

THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN IN THE LIFE OF THE 
NATION. 

This is the subject which I shall discuss this morning. 

Disorganizers of society look upon great men as in 
some sense usurpers of other men's rights ; as having 
crowded their way up to stations of prominence and 
power, by jostling aside their betters. When the nihilist 
prepares his hand-grenade or his infernal machine ; when 
the assassin points his revolver at the ruler of the people, 
it is with this construction. They do not reflect that 
preparation for such high positions is of God himself; 
that God fits men for such places, and calls them by 
name as He did Cyrus of old ; that in some true sense 
they are God's gifts ! They see in rulers only common 
men, accidentally great ; tricked out with stolen titles ; 
grown great, like the big fishes of the sea, by eating up 
the little ones. This is the way Brutus talked to himself 
when he thought to get rid of Csesar. And this is the 
way Cassius talked to him : 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 3 

" Brutus and Caesar ! What should be in that Caesar ? 
Why should that name be sounded more than yours ? 
Write them together : yours is as fair a name ; 
Sound them : it doth become the mouth as well ; 
Weigh them : it is as heavy ; conjure with them : 
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar." 

Irreverence for rulers is one of the perils of a Repub- 
lic. Goldsmith says : 

" Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; 
But a bold peasantry their country's pride, 
When once destroyed, can never be supplied." 

But we may go too far in this direction. It is all true 
that a breath can give dignity and station ; a breath can 
make Presidents and Senators and Judges ; a breath may 
call a Cincinnati^ from the plough, a Washington from 
the peaceful shadows of Mt. Vernon ; a Jefferson from 
Monticello ; a Webster from Marshfield. But the breath 
that calls them cannot make them ; sometimes calls them 
in vain ; cannot make their place good, when they are 
summoned from the earth. The bold peasantry, of which 
Goldsmith speaks, need trite princes and lords ; need 
great men, men who can think, and speak, and execute ; 
men who can legislate and organize and command. How 
peaceful has been the heart of this great nation in the 
thought that since March 4th, 188 1, there has been a 
genuine, typical American in the Presidential chair ; a 
man such as only our free institutions could make ; their 
ripest fruitage, their choicest bloom ! Here, at length, 
was a statesman who, from his own experience, knew all 
the aspects and vicissitudes of American life ; had touched 
it in all points of his career ; who had been rounded out 
and perfected by it. " Upon this arm," said the nation, 
" I can lean. This head, this heart, I can trust." 



4 THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 

No man rejoiced more in the election of James Abram 
Garfield to the Presidential chair than myself. No man 
condemns the "deep damnation of his taking off" more 
than I. And yet, there is something grander in the man, 
as the product of our free institutions ; as the growth of 
that widow's son, of that log cabin ; of that common 
school, academy and college ; of those conditions of 
early poverty and later self-help, than in the niche into 
which he was elevated by the enthusiasm of the American 
people. The American people did not make him great. 
Never was a more fitting selection. And, yet, had the 
selection never been made, the man had been the same. 
It was glorious, for once, to feel that a candidate had 
been fixed upon, not because he could be elected, but be- 
cause he was so well furnished to fill and adorn the place. 
But now we may well ask whether God did not give him 
this elevation, less because it was the legitimate fruit of 
his life and the crown of his character, than to give em- 
phasis to that life and that character ; we may well ask, 
whether he was not called to pass through this ordeal of 
fire, that the people might love him better, and take his 
name and his memory more into their heart of hearts 
forever. 

It is a narrow-view of the function of great men in the 
life of a nation, to confine it to the places of power 
which they occupy ; to the great measures they originate 
and carry safely through. As an educating and mould- 
ing influence ; as giving direction to the ambitions of 
those who come after them ; it is more by what they are, 
than by what they do, that they enter into the nation's 
life ; that future generations beat with their pulse. The 
places to which they are exalted, and the deeds which they 
achieve, give them a suitable setting ; call attention to 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 5 

what they are ; to the methods by which they come — 

" To mould a mighty state's decrees, 
And shape the whisper of the throne." 

It is not alone what Washington did which has entered 
into the life of this nation. It is what he was. It is 
how he came to be what he was. Had James Abram 
Garfield never been elected President of these United 
States, the nation would have experienced a great loss 
in the moral forces which would have failed of entering 
into her life. She would have greatly wronged herself 
and all her future. He would have been just the same 
man in the House, in the Senate, but equal emphasis 
would not have been given to the fact. When during the 
last political campaign, it seemed for a moment uncer- 
tain what would be the result — our candidate had such 
fiery ordeals to pass, such gauntlets to run — I said to my- 
self, " Well, even if he fail, it will be an incalculable 
blessing to the coming generations to have so minutely 
studied his character and career." And so, to-day, all 
that his few months of Presidential service, all that the 
execrable deed of the assassin, all that his eighty days of 
heroic suffering, in the eye of the whole nation, nay, of 
the whole world, have done, is to underscore the great- 
hearted noble man he was. He is ours now, beyond the 
touch of time. We knew him to be great in all intellec- 
tual qualities ; we knew how easily he was chief, wherever 
he came into comparison with men, in outward activities. 
This proves how great he was ; how brave, how affection- 
ate, how filial, how fearless, when confronting the great 
realities of the other life. 

The highest product of American national life, is 
neither patrician, nor plebean. It blends and unites 



6 THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 

them both. It has the patrician culture, with the plebean 
heart. Washington stands at the head of one type ; 
Lincoln at the head of the other. Do we err, when we 
intimate that Garfield illustrates them both? A plebean, 
a common man, in all his sympathies ; a patrician in 
the quality of his mind and the extent of his culture ! 
Who ever heard the ringing words of his eloquence ; saw 
the speaking man, so self-poised, so self-possessed, as he 
minted new truth, or gave old truth his own image and 
superscription ; ever felt the aptness of his utterance, the 
vigor and grasp of his thought, saw 

" How thought leapt out to wed with thought, 
Ere thought could wed itself with speech," 

without recognizing in him the best fruits of the best 
culture of the schools ? without seeing that this man was 
heir to the best thinking of the ages? And, yet, who- 
ever felt the grasp of his hand, or looked into his kindly 
eyes, or noted his warm ways of friendship, his familiar 
speech to the comrade of the school, of the field, or the 
forum, without taking him right to his heart, as a brother- 
man ; a brother-man of brother-men ? 

The desire to become one of a nation's great men ; to 
sit in the seat of Senators and Judges ; to command her 
armies, to shape her counsels ; to preside over her desti- 
nies ; is one of the highest ambitions which a patriot can 
cherish. In all truly great men, it lies among the initial 
elements of their nature. It is the earnest and prophecy 
of what shall be. It is something world-wide in its dif- 
ference from an ambition to be lifted up into place, for 
its own sake ; that ambition which corrodes, and corrupts, 
and defiles a man. It comes to a man in his boyhood. 
Impressions are made upon him, by reading the lives of 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 7 

great men who have gone before. Longings move within 
him which he durst not breathe ; germs begin to spring, 
and strengthen, and grow with his growth. 

President Garfield has left this among his choice things : 
" From the genius of our Government the pathway to 
honorable distinction lies open to all. No post of honor 
is so high but the poorest boy may hope to reach it. It 
is the pride of every American, that many cherished 
names, at whose mention our hearts beat with a quicker 
bound, were worn by the sons of poverty, who conquered 
obscurity, and became fixed stars in our firmament." 
There were cherished names which made the heart of this 
boy Garfield ; this barefoot boy in the public school of 
Orange ; this bell-ringer in the academy at Hiram ; 
this student and teacher in the college ; there were 
cherished names which made the heart of this boy beat 
with a quicker bound ; as his name will henceforth 
quicken the heart-beat of American boys in all future 
generations. The fixed stars in our firmament of national 
life, never dim and never die. And henceforth he him- 
self is. one of them. 

It is not because we love the ignoble beginnings of 
many of our eminent men, that we so often refer to 
them ; it is because, for our children's sake, we love to 
recount the conquests which these men have made ; how 
they grew to the greatness which awaited them. In 
themselves considered, poverty and an humble birth are no 
ground of claim to distinction. Says the great dramatist : 
" Some are born great, and some achieve greatness, and 
some have greatness thrust upon them." In another 
sense than the poet means, those who achieve greatness, 
were born great. And their greatness is only their filling 
out of the outline of God's purpose in creating them. It 



8 THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 

is the record of this achievement that we love to con- 
template and recount to our children ; how these boys, 
having the germs of greatness within them, with a sub- 
lime patience, took up life's burdens ; met life's rebuffs ; 
adjusted themselves to life's complications ; were wrought 
upon by life's surroundings ; and crowded their diligent 
way forward until they stood alone, and the people 
recognized them, and crowned them great. In such a 
country as ours, every boy that does this will repeat him- 
self a hundred fold, to the end of time. 

Do not understand me that the boy Garfield had only 
secular ambitions ; cared supremely to go to the front, 
and be felt by the men of his generation ; to speak to 
senates, to mould the decrees of states. First of all, he 
had a holier ambition : to please his mother, to please 
his conscience, to please his God. Such a superstructure 
as he erected, so shapely, so symmetrical ; a character 
so well proportioned, so well balanced ; that grew nobler 
and nobler every year he lived ; ay, and had the same 
prospect of growth, and capacity for growth, the day of 
his untimely death, as a quarter of a century before ; 
such a superstructure as he erected was possible only by 
the careful laying of the broadest and deepest moral 
foundations. I find the first secret of his greatness in 
the fact that he was the son of such a mother ; and the 
second in the fact that he was the husband of such a 
wife. 

A French writer in the Paris newspaper Figaro, has 
said this : "I always have kept the sons of widows sepa- 
rate from my general collection of portraits. They 
seem to me to be twice the woman's son ; for a particular 
sweetness of life is impressed upon them ; and however 
busy they may be, their characters show the work of the 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 9 

gentler sex. A feminine hand has modeled such statues, 
before active life and great works have reproduced them 
in marble. Such is President Garfield ; a colossal Yan- 
kee, as it were, with all the mild, yet vigorous qualities 
of a widow's son." That filial instinct which inspired 
our wounded President, torn with the assassin's bullet ; 
cut with the surgeon's knives ; and battling with such 
unequal odds for every breath of life he drew; to pen 
that immortal letter to his white-haired mother ; that 
shielding care which he took of her ; that proud recog- 
nition of his obligation to her, which he was always for- 
ward to acknowledge ; as well as her pathetic utterances 
since his death, show us the closeness of the bond which 
united them. Happy son of such a mother ! Happy 
mother of such a son ! And I say, right here, in this 
home-life of this widow, with only the widow's God ; 
and in that other home-life, which brought him wife and 
children ; wife to be loved and leaned upon, as well to 
support ; children to toy "with and to educate, as well as 
feed and clothe ; right here, in this home-life, sweetened 
by human love, and made sacred by love divine ; he 
built himself down deep, he anchored himself to un- 
shaken foundations. These were Christian households ; 
and this man never did anything unworthy of them. 
Ay, his success was their success. Have you forgotten 
the proud day, when having taken the oath of office, he 
stood in presence of acclaiming throngs, the President 
of the greatest nation on earth ; within a stone's throw 
of the scenes of his greatest forensic triumphs ; in front 
of that magnificent structure, every echo of which knew 
his voice ; he turned and kissed his mother and his wife, 
as if to give them their share in the honor ; as if he 
would not enter upon his stupendous responsibilities, 



IO THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 

without recognizing their title to accompany him ? And 
how nobly, how grandly have they done it ! Some peo- 
ple called it gush and sentiment. As well call the up- 
bursting fountain gush and sentiment. It was one of the 
primary secrets of the man's life. Read the dispatch 
which he caused to be sent from the White House to 
summon his wife to his bedside. He made the very 
lightning tender, in breaking to her the tale of his hurt, 
in telling the tale of his love. 

President Garfield's honors came to him unsought. 
Nay, the time came when they were, as it were heaped 
upon him. They came like double peals of thunder. 
They came so fast that he was unable to keep up with 
them ; to qualify for the latest before a new one was an- 
nounced. While this messenger of the people was yet 
speaking, another messenger arrived. It would seem 
now as though these gifts were accelerated to meet the 
brief limits allotted him here on earth ; his time was to 
be so short. 

The greatness which this man achieved seems unlike 
that of many of our public men. It was rather grown 
into than struggled for. Life seemed to bring him honors 
and lay them at his feet. It was rather God's work than 
his own. Everywhere along his life there was a place 
which cried out for this man. His attainment of place 
seemed rather a natural process, like the growth of a tree, 
which puts out branch after branch, until her graceful 
outlines are all complete. Says President Chadbourne, 
of Williams College, " His course, since he entered act- 
ive life, has seemed to move on in the same line in which 
he moved here." He did not take place as a storming- 
party takes a fortification, by straining every nerve, by 
bringing every influence to bear upon the sources from 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. II 

which a place comes. Success seemed to fling open her 
golden portals at his approach. He stood up in a great 
Convention to advocate the claims of another. He be- 
came at once the cynosure of all eyes ; he ravished all 
ears. Was it his fault that the people recognized him? 
He could not be true to another without being his own 
best self. It was nothing new. He had been thus recog- 
nized all his life long. That manly presence, that com- 
manding intellect, those persuasive words, that great 
beating heart, that vibrating, sonorous voice, the whole 
bearing of the man proclaimed him what he was. There 
he stood, and the people took him. The hour of his su- 
preme destiny was about to strike. He did not need to 
buy and sell. He did not need to pack conventions. 
He stood there for what he was, as God made him, and 
the people knew him. Cervantes has said that every man 
is "the son of his own works." He was the son of his 
own works. His nomination was an intuition ; in an 
earthly sense it was an inspiration. It was foreordained ; 
like the consummate bloom of the flower. Well might 
he turn as pale as death when he saw that tide turn ; 
when, away from the eminent statesman of his own 
choice ; away from the plumed knight, his brother-friend ; 
away from the veteran of a hundred bloody fields, the 
world-honored American ; away from other noble com- 
petitors, the heart of that Convention turned to him. , 

Jean Richter says in his Titan that " a man must have 
either great men or great objects before him, otherwise 
his powers degenerate; as the magnet's do when it has 
lain for a long time without being turned to the right 
corners of the world." This man's powers never de- 
generated. He was all the time using them. They were 
always feeling the electrie currents of great objects. Like 



I2 THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 

the Hyblean bee, he was all the time gathering honey for 
some after mellifluous speech. He was reverent of good 
things by nature ; and to him all good things were great. 
He had no flippant flings at the simple religion of his 
mother ; but, leaning on his strong arm, as upon her 
beautiful staff, to the end, from the White House, as from 
the log cabin of Orange, they walked to the House of 
God in company. And when the assassin first sought 
him, he sought him where he knew he would be, in the 
sanctuary of God. He was reverent of that great man, 
still living, who answered his letter of inquiry as to a future 
College, " Come on, and we will do the best we can for 
you;" and who was crowned when the people crowned 
his pupil. And he himself has said, that beyond all that 
he ever got through his eastern Alma Mater, from books, 
was the impression made upon his moral nature, by that 
greatest of all American teachers, who is so much more 
than even he can teach. And who can ever forget, how 
it was that fateful July morning ; how like a buoyant- 
hearted boy, he was turning aside from his great duties 
for one day of reunion, and the renewal of old College 
comradeship, when the assassin found him ? 

It was fortunate for James Abram Garfield, that that 
night, when he lay wakeful, talking over his future studies 
with a young companion, they decided that he should go 
East. The descendant of New England ancestry : having 
enfolded within him hidden forces, which had their fount- 
ain head in those high-up hills of severe and pure life ; it 
was fitting, that the capital of this symmetrical column, 
which was to be built into the Temple of Freedom, side 
by side with a Washington and a Lincoln, should be 
carved and set in place by New England hands : that he, 
who from his boyhood had heard the language of the 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 1 3 

great Lakes, should complete his studies, where he could 
listen to the hymn, which the Pilgrims heard, when they 
laid our first foundations. 

This man, whom we honor, whom we mourn, to-day, 
was the united, the consummate product of the New 
England of the East, and the New England of the West. 
We cannot help it, " Westward the course of empire 
takes its way." " Time's noblest product is the last." 
Let it satisfy us, that the East lives again in the West. 
Henceforth our Websters and our Sumners must come 
from toward the setting sun. It used to be the complaiut, 
that none of New England's, none of the country's greatest 
minds could be exalted to the Presidential chair ; that 
while the chair of the Chief Executive, was, as it were, 
borne upon the shoulders of the noblest statesmen, North 
and South, East and West, not one of them could win a 
seat within it. And some of them have died broken-hearted 
because of this. Henceforth, this reproach is taken away. 
This man, not yet, fifty years of age ; and our Washington 
died at sixty seven ; our Webster, at sixty seven ; Charles 
Sumner at sixty four and Henry Wilson at sixty three ; 
this man, who had within him life-forces which would 
have carried him into the calm estuary of such a serene 
old age, as that where his reverend mother lies in her be- 
reavement ; whose expectation of life was founded, not 
alone upon the perfection of his physical proportions, 
where manly beauty and strength were so splendidly 
combined ; his wholesome and temperate life ; but upon 
his filial fulfillment of the first commandment with prom- 
ise ; upon his dwelling in the secret place of the Most 
High, his abiding under the shadow of the Almighty ; 
for had not God said : Honor thy father and thy mother, 
that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord 



14 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 



thy God giveth thee ? and with long life will I satisfy 
him ? this man, moving along the groove of God's pur- 
poses ; not precociously and prematurely, but like the 
movements of nature, first the blade, then the ear, then, 
the full corn in the ear ; never craving for position ; 
never jealous of friend, or ungenerous to foe ; always 
thorough, always solid in his attainments ; touching the 
mountain-tops of his career like some winged Mercury, 

" New-lighted on a Heaven-kissing hill ;" 

until, dazzling and bewildering us, he disappears from 
mortal sight ; takes all his glory and his honor, and lays 
them at the feet of Him on whose vesture and whose 
thigh is written King of kings and Lord of lords ; this 
man, with a genius for all the highest intellectual pro- 
cesses ; whose ordinary thoughts were as fresh as the 
morning dew, and as fragrant as the flower of spring- 
time ; who had sat at the feet of the great thinkers in all 
departments of thought, and had gleaned something from 
all ; who studied all subjects and mastered them all; who 
loved his party without being a partisan ; who looked at 
great questions with a statesman's eye, and handled them 
as only a statesman could ; and who, relative to the 
period of his life, and the promise of his powers, was but 
in the gristle, and only hardening into the bone of a 
wonderful manhood ; this man did, yet, in the first de- 
cade of the second century of the nation's life, reach the 
highest place in the gift of the American people ! There 
is no decadence of the nation here. If the sage of 
Marshfield died of a broken heart, that only common- 
place men could sit in the Presidential seat, he is now 
avenged. We have had there the consummate flower of 
our best civilization ; a man as good as he was great ; as 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 1 5 

great as he was good. And the people knew him, when 
they saw him, and always said, " Go up higher !" 

Do you ask me why such a man was given to us, and 
then so rudely and cruelly taken from us ; left to be stung 
to death by the fangs of the most vicious and poisonous 
reptile, that crawls in the rank growth of our worst civi- 
lization ? why from the time his name was mentioned as 
a candidate for the high place, which he has just vacated 
by death — and his supreme fitness for which now seems 
so resplendent — he was followed by that tongue of slan- 
der, which outvenoms all the worms of the Nile ? 

" God is His own interpreter, 
And He will make it plain." 

Not for his own sake, you may be very sure. It was 
not for his own sake that he was so foully singled out ; 
the kindliest man by the vilest ; that he battled so long 
to baffle the foul intent ; that so long we watched at his 
bedside, and saw into the inmost chambers of that great 
soul, where still was the calm sunshine and the heroic 
will ; that we counted the beat of that great heart, as it 
throbbed under the very ribs of death ; that we. followed 
him to Elberon, where the sea, as it broke on his ear, 
said to his quest for restoration, "It is not in me ;" that 
he came back here dead ; our very houses blasted with 
the black frost of death, so lately blooming with the 
colors of the free ; that, at last, the funeral cortege bear- 
ing the dead President ; bearing the widow and the 
fatherless, moved away westward, while the nation bowed 
in grief still waits for the last words to be said over his 
dust. 

God only knows what passed between this Christian 
brother and Himself, from July 2d to September 19th. 
Sequestered by what seems to a Christian people, a 



1 6 THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 

false, a pagan conception of the offices of the Christian 
religion, from the kindly presence of his own gentle and 
priestlike pastor ; while the nation was in prayer in his 
behalf, for those long, weary weeks, meeting only the 
same professional faces, however sympathetic, however 
kindly ; how he must have hungered for some single 
word of prayer, breathed up from the depths of a full 
heart ! God only knows, I say, what passed between 
this Christian brother and Himself. And all Christen- 
dom had a right to the testimony of this man dying. 
For when his poor, pitiable, befooled attendants told him 
that all was nearly over, it was, as Prince Henry said of 
dying King John : 

" It is too late ! The life of all his blood 
• Is touched corruptibly, and his pure brain, 

Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling house, 

Doth by the idle comments that it makes, 

Foretell the ending of mortality." 

But what, meantime, has passed between our hearts 
and God ? The nation has spent days and weeks in 
prayer. She has wept and watched, and wept and 
watched again. For months God has fed us with the 
bread of tears ; and given us tears to drink in great 
measure. Has the affliction been borne as though God 
were dealing with us for our sins ? Has he forgiven us ? 
Will this stroke be enough ? However the deadly missile 
was winged ; by what malice and mad purpose, we must 
still say, "It is the Lord !" He has taken away the 
mighty man, the man of war, the honorable man, the 
counsellor, the eloquent orator. He has put the govern- 
ment upon other shoulders ; strong and true, we believe, 
but still unaccustomed to the burden. This man, our 
President, our representative, has been smitten for us. It 
has been done by the Judge of all the earth. Do not 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 1 7 

our relations to God need fresh adjustment ? We made 
a covenant with Him, when in the furnace of civil war ; 
when He seemed to walk with us as with the Hebrew 
youths. Has this covenant been kept ? Has it been 
kept by the men in our highest places? It is a great 
thing to be a Christian nation. It is a dignity and an 
honor ; but it implies obligations. If these obligations 
are not met, it implies perils. For we are still in God's 
hands. Are we meeting them ? We have Christian con- 
victions respecting Mormonism, respecting the Indians, 
respecting the traffic in spirituous liquors, respecting the 
Day of God. Are we true to them ? Are we trying to 
put them into public sentiment ? into laws and institu- 
tions? 

It is indeed a great thing to feel, that though the hand 
at the wheel has been thus palsied in death, the ship of 
State does not stagger or swerve from her course, but 
moves majestically on ; that the footsteps of God are in 
the seas before her. The Chief Executive dies ; the gov- 
ernment cannot die. It does not vest in any one man ; 
be he ever so eminent, be he ever so beloved. It vests in 
constitutional law. It vests in the hearts of the people. 
The same authoritative voice which clothed Garfield with 
Presidential power, at the same time indicated his suc- 
cessor, and that successor is our President. We turn 
away from our Garfield dead ; from the lips that had 
such music ; from the brow that was so kingly ; from the 
heart which beat so proudly and loved so well ; from the 
form that had such action ; not to forget him ; not to 
forget his triumphal day, nor the day of dirges and woe. 
We will read the strange pages of his life to our children ; 
we will write his maxims in our memory ; his form shall 
stand in stone and in bronze, so long as the Republic 



1 8 THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 

shall endure. If he has made mistakes, as who of our great- 
est have not? have we not forgiven them ? let us remem- 
ber that his hand was scarcely familiar with the helm of 
State ; that he was yet in the narrows of his administra- 
tion ; and that his greatest mistake must always have 
sprung from a great and loving heart, that feared no ill 
because it meant none. Sometime all men will say of 
him, "A man more sinned against than sinning." 

These are his own words ; with them let us draw near 
to the end : " Individuals may wear, for a time, the glory 
of our institutions ; but they carry it not to the grave 
with them. Like rain drops from Heaven, they may 
pass through the circle of the shining bow and add to its 
lustre. But when they have sank in the earth again, the 
proud arch still spans the sky, and shines gloriously on." 
Yes, but as the rain-drops are gathered back into the 
clouds, and return to shine in God's bow of promise 
again, so the lives of a nation's great men are ever re- 
peating themselves in the generations to come ; and God 
gives once, but to give again ; changing the individual, 
but repeating the type, till time shall be no more ! And 
so it shall be with him. This shall be his function, too. 

We turn away from our Garfield dead ; for God has 
taken him to other spheres, to other administration. For 
is it not written, ''His servants shall serve Him?" But 
in taking one He has given us another. The man whom 
the people named second, God has now named first. 
Are there not last that shall be first ? We turn from 
what might have been, to what is and what is to be. No 
unlineal hand takes the scptre ; but a man of character 
and purpose true and tried ; a man who has walked in 
the shadow of our great eclipse, with a pathetic discreet- 
ness, which has won all hearts ; and whose first official 



THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 1 9 

acts and utterances give assurance that with these un- 
sought responsibilities has come to him peculiar grace 
from God. If he has made his mistakes, we bury them 
in that still open grave of his predecessor. May we not 
close with the lines, which the Poet Tennyson, himself a 
mourner over our dead Garfield, puts into the lips of the 
dying King Arthur ; with the few last lines of the poem ? 

" The old order changeth, yielding place to new. 
And God fulfills himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 
Comfort thyself. What comfort is in me ? 
I have lived my life, and that which I have done, 
May He, within Himself, make pure ! but then, 
If thou shouldst never see my face again, 
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer, 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice 
Rise like a fountain for me, night and day. 
For what are men better than sheep or goats, 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves, and those who call them friend ? 
For so, the round world is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 
* -x- * * -x- * 

And so to bed : where yet in sleep I seemed 
To sail with Arthur under looming shores, 
Point after point : till on to dawn, when dreams 
Begin to feel the touch and stir of day, 
To me, methought, who waited with a crowd, 
There came a barque, that blowing forward, bore 
King Arthur like a modern gentleman 
Of stateliest port : and all the people cried, 
'Arthur is come again ; he cannot die.' 
Then those that stood upon the hills behind, 
Repeated, ' Come again, and thrice as fair !' 
And further inland voices echoed, ' Come 
With all good things ! ' " 

We pray not for the dead, but for the living. And 
when this nation awakens from her grief, may she find 
the poet's parable true. Then shall be fulfilled the 
prophecy : " Thou shall no more be termed Forsaken ! 



20 THE FUNCTION OF GREAT MEN. 

Neither shall thy land be termed any more Desolate ! 
But thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah ! 
For the Lord delighteth in Thee." 



M 



